Retired NPS super weighs in on issue

The National Park Service's approval of a power line route through the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area and Appalachian Trail violates the agency's core mission by doing permanent environmental damage to wetlands and wildlife, says a recently retired NPS superintendent who helped review the project.

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By DAVID PIERCE

poconorecord.com

By DAVID PIERCE

Posted Feb. 4, 2013 at 2:55 PM

By DAVID PIERCE
Posted Feb. 4, 2013 at 2:55 PM

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The National Park Service's approval of a power line route through the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area and Appalachian Trail violates the agency's core mission by doing permanent environmental damage to wetlands and wildlife, says a recently retired NPS superintendent who helped review the project.

Former Appalachian Trail Superintendent Pamela Underhill charges in a court filing that a superior's decision allowing taller towers and more powerful electrical lines to cross federal lands near Bushkill violates the National Environmental Policy Act.

She supports a federal lawsuit filed by environmental groups attempting to overturn the approval.

The siting decision by NPS Northeast Director Dennis Reidenbach is contrary to a recommendation that she and Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area Superintendent John Donahue made in favor of an alternative route crossing the southern edge of the two-state park, Underhill said.

Underhill, who retired last December, and Donahue oversaw the NEPA environmental review, required for all projects encroaching on federal lands.

PPL Electric Utilities of Pennsylvania and PSE&G of New Jersey won approval to use an existing power line corridor predating the park to replace 28 95-foot-high towers with 195-foot towers, as part of a 147-mile line between Berwick and Roseland, N.J.

This includes expanding a right-of-way and building new access roads within the recreation area, replacing the existing 230,000-volt power line with two 500,000-volt (500-kV) lines.

"This is a major new infrastructure project that is slated to slice through some of the most sensitive areas of the park, and its effect will be different in kind — and substantially worse," Underhill wrote in support of a federal lawsuit by environmental groups.

"These impacts include permanent destruction of or damage to fragile wetlands, geological formations, bald eagle habitats and migratory bird corridors," Underhill wrote. "Scenically, the new line would mar iconic views to a much greater extent than the existing transmission lines, which currently do not rise above the tree line."

Underhill contends the siting decision was based solely on the utilities' proposal to create a $66 million "mitigation" fund for park service projects inside the park and new land acquisitions outside it.

The decision was made in the higher levels of the Interior Department — of which the NPS is part — and ignored the "considered views" of Park Service professionals and analyses conducted during the NEPA review, she added.

"Mitigation funding to purchase lands outside the national parks or to otherwise try to ameliorate impacts cannot substitute for preserving intact the very resources inside the parks that led to their establishment," she said.

The two superintendents recommended approving another route that would cross the southern edge of the recreation area and trail near Cherry Valley, where another existing utility right of way would be expanded, she said. The utilities would have been required to dismantle the pre-existing shorter power line towers in Bushkill — crossing the park near Fernwood Country Club — and combine the old line with the new project.

The government said its siting decision complies with federal laws, based partly on a review of the environmental studies and public comments. The majority of access roads needed for the power line work are within the existing right-of-way that the utilities already have the legal right to access for clearing vegetation, they wrote.

Reidenbach is a seasoned NPS official with the authority to make the siting decision, government attorneys wrote to federal Judge Richard W. Roberts.

Underhill's statement should be totally disregarded because the court's review must be limited to the administrative record available at the time of Reidenbach's decision last October, they wrote.

The judge is expected to rule sometime in February. Donahue declined comment.